William A. Henry III Quotes

United Kingdom, Critic
January 14, 1950 – June, 28, 1994.

William Alfred Henry III was an American cultural critic and author. Henry lived in North Plainfield, New Jersey as a young man. He graduated from Yale in 1971 and began his career in journalism in Boston, writing for the Boston Globe. His coverage of school desegregation in Boston won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975. He also wrote on the arts for the Globe, winning a second Pulitzer for his television criticism in 1980.

Where a generation ago people felt entitled to a chance at education, they now feel entitled to the credential affirming that they have completed a course of study regardless of their actual mastery.

William A. Henry III
In the unexamined American Dream rhetoric promoting mass higher education in the nation of my youth, the implicit vision was that one day everyone, or at least practically everyone, would be a manager or a professional. We would use the most elitist of all means, scholarship, toward the most egalitarian of ends. We would all become chiefs; hardly anyone would be left a mere Indian.

William A. Henry III
- Dream
- Education
- Mean

The very essence of school is elitism. Schools exist to teach, to test, to rank hierarchically to promote the idea that knowing and understanding more is better than knowing and understanding less.

William A. Henry III
Ultimately it is the yearning to believe that anyone can be brought up to college level that has brought colleges down to everyone's level.

William A. Henry III
- Believe
- College
- Levels
In my mind, partial failure is always better than delusory success.

William A. Henry III
- Success
- Failure
- Partial
Any departure from fact is the first step on a slippery slope toward unbelievability.

William A. Henry III
- First
- Facts
- Departure
A poet laureate of adolescent sexuality and middle-age longing.

William A. Henry III
The dominant mood of contemporary American culture is the self-celebration of the peasantry.

William A. Henry III

It is a commonplace observation that liberals believe in the perfectibility of man while conservatives believe in the endurance of original sin. Superficially, that would suggest that conservatives take a more understanding and indulgent view of individual lapses, while liberals take a more harshly judgmental one. In fact, we know, quite the opposite is the case.

William A. Henry III
No longer a mark of distinction or proof of achievement, a college education is these days a mere rite of passage, a capstone to adolescent party time.

William A. Henry III